Cohere co-founder Nick Frosst says throwing more computing power at large-language models (LLMs) won’t necessarily get the world any closer to so-called artificial general intelligence (AGI).
On the 20VC podcast, hosted by Harry Stebbings, Frosst took a contrarian spin on industry hype around AGI. The computer scientist and indie musician called out OpenAI CEO Sam Altman for both touting the technology’s power and raising concerns about its potential threat to humanity.
Frosst doesn’t believe that pure scaling could create AGI, a nebulous concept which he defines as “treating a computer like a person.”
“I think that was academically disingenuous and did a disservice to the technology he loves,” Frosst said.
Frosst has rejected the notion that AI models pose an existential threat to humanity. He even pushed back on his former mentor and Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton, who pioneered the technology underpinning LLMs.
Frosst said he doesn’t believe that pure scaling could create AGI, a nebulous concept which he defines as “treating a computer like a person.”
Instead, he preferred to dig into where he believes AI tools can be truly useful: the workplace. It’s in line with the value proposition of Cohere, which is Canada’s leading foundational model developer. The company caters specifically to security-minded enterprises and governments. Its flagship platform, North, aims to speed up and automate tedious tasks at work, such as creating reports and sending emails.
Frosst said the release of OpenAI’s newest GPT-5 model, which Stebbings thought was “worse” than its predecessor despite using more computing power to train, showed that throwing more hardware at the problem may not be the solution for building a better product.
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